In a timely shot in the arm just days ahead of the Iowa caucuses, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has received his first big conservative endorsement with former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin announcing her support for him.
Although Trump leads the Republican field nationally, he has been locked in a statistical dead heat with Senator Ted Cruz in Iowa, which will kick off the US presidential primaries on February 1. Pundits were quick to see the Palin endorsement as a big boost for Trump at the expense of Cruz. “I am greatly honored to receive Sarah’s endorsement,” Trump said in a statement. “She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support.”
Pundits were quick to interpret the Palin endorsement as a big boost for Trump and a clear setback for Cruz, who had won his first Senate bid in 2012 with her support, something he still acknowledges.
Joining Trump later at a campaign rally in Ames, Iowa, Palin touted the billionaire businessman as someone eminently qualified to “make America great again”. As she put it, he’s someone who will “secure our borders”, “secure our jobs” and “secure our homes”. “We need someone new, who has the power, and is in the position to bust up that establishment. To make things great again,” said the former Alaska Governor, who was Senator John McCain’s running mate in the landmark 2008 election that Barack Obama won with Joe Biden.
As a commander-in-chief, there will be “no more pussyfooting around”, she said, slamming President Obama as the “capitualator-in-chief”.
A strong conservative and symbol of the Tea Party movement, Palin also slammed sections of the Republican establishment for ganging up against Trump on the grounds that he was not a conservative, remarking: “What the heck would the establishment know about conservatismIJ”
Taking aim at the “establishment candidates” in the race, she commented: “They’ve been wearing political correctness kind of like a suicide vest.”
In an apparent reference to Cruz, the Trump campaign said in a statement that Palin as a conservative “helped launch the careers of several key future leaders of the Republican Party and conservative movement”.